Speaking at BlakcHat MEA 2022

Monday. December 05, 2022 - 4 mins

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, recently hosted BlackHat MEA (Middle East & Africa), the largest security conference in the Middle East and Africa region.

BlackHat MEA featured various events, including an Executive Summit, Technical tracks, a Drone Hacking village, a Car Hacking village, a live Tesla hacking event, and a startup competition.

My Talk

I have had the opportunity to speak this year at BlackHat, where I presented my latest research, “Demystifying Practical DDoS Attacks”.

What I liked at BlackHat, and why you should apply next year

This vehicle awaited all speakers when arriving at the Riyadh Airport (King Khalid International Airport).

This is just one of the lovely tokens of hospitality the conference made. It leaves a fantastic impression about the conference.

The organization of the conference was impressive. Clearly, a lot of effort had gone into planning and coordinating the event. This was evident in the high quality of the talks, the smooth logistics of the venue, the activities designed for students, and the startup competition. Overall, it was a well-organized and professionally run conference.

Awesome talks

I only saw as many talks as I would have liked at BlackHat MEA due to the multiple tracks running simultaneously. However, I was able to catch a few exciting presentations. I’m looking forward to the release of the conference recordings online to catch up on the talks I missed. For next year’s conference, I hope there will be fewer tracks so attendees can more easily plan which talks to attend.

“Disrupting Ransomware” By Lance James
“Assume Breach” By Caleb Sima
“Human Security Engineering – A Holistic Approach To Addressing Human Incidents” By Ira Winkler
“I Bet Nobody Ever Thought To Do This With A Camel..” By Chris Roberts
“Apt Hunting And The Threat Intelligence Dilemma” By Salah Altokhais
“Dotdumper: Automatically Unpacking Dotnet Based Malware” By Max Kersten
“Wipermania: An All You Can Wipe Buffet” By Max Kersten
“Turbocharging IOC Validation: Become A More Efficient CTI Analyst” By Arwa Alomari
“So Many Devices, So Little Time” By Joseph Mccray
“Abusing Azure Virtual Machines” By Tarek Naja
“The Evolution Of Ios Security” By Prateek Gianchandani
“What The Waf: Scalable, Multi-cloud, Automated Security Using Waf” By Khaled Farah
“An Attacker’s Perspective” By Quinn Carman
“Supply Chain Attacks Are The New High Watermark” By Milad Aslaner
“Scaling Soc And Ir Teams To Defend Kubernetes-Based Workloads” By Milad Alnaser

Photos for the memory 💚

Quinn Carman, the former NSA red team chief, talked about how adversaries approach targets and patterns seen across different engagements. Talk: An Attacker’s Perspective

Ira Winkler shared an interesting perspective about today’s industry approach to solving Human Security challenges and how organizations can improve and address security awareness risks. Talk: Human Security Engineering – A Holistic Approach To Addressing Human Incidents

Lance James was speaking about building a Ransomware remediation system. Talk: Disrupting Ransomware

Salah Altokhais giving a talk: “Apt Hunting And The Threat Intelligence Dilemma”

Arwa Alomari talked about data enrichment of IOCs and automating CTI analysis. Talk: Turbocharging IOC Validation: Become A More Efficient CTI Analyst

Max Kersten analyzed various wipers attacks in the past years and similarities in their development and execution. Talk: “Wipermania: An All You Can Wipe Buffet”